Paradiplomacy and paranoia

During the past few weeks, South Africa has witnessed two notable examples of what foreign-policy pundits call “paradiplomacy” – the conduct of foreign relations by entities in a country other than the national government.  

First the DA’s Tshwane mayor Solly Msimanga visited Taiwan to meet his counterpart in the capital Taipei, and a few weeks later DA party leader Mmusi Maimane travelled to Israel to meet the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. 

The ANC exploded. Msimanga was accused of undermining the ANC’s One China policy – i.e. the policy that Taiwan is a “renegade province”, not a separate country. Maimane was blasted for imperilling the ANC government’s supposed policy of isolating Israel.

Some within the ruling party even cried treason. Msimanga hastened to explain that he had not been conducting alternative foreign policy but was merely trying to boost investments in his city.

Maimane explained that he had met Netanyahu only to help advance the two-state solution to the Middle East crisis – which the ANC government also officially endorses. He said he had also hoped to meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, but this had not come off.

This brouhaha exposed confusion in the ANC government’s policies. When asked how Maimane had violated government policy, official spokespeople could only cite President Jacob Zuma’s remarks at the ANC’s 105th birthday celebrations that “we firmly discourage travel to Israel for causes not related to fostering peace in the region”. But that was Zuma enunciating ANC rather than government policy, presumably. And Maimane had said he was in Israel precisely to foster peace.

Meanwhile, in Taiwan, the government itself maintains a de-facto embassy, though it is officially called a “liaison office”.

Former DA leader Tony Leon, who later served as South Africa’s ambassador to Argentina from 2009 until 2012, sees several contradictions. “Zuma told me prior to my Argentine appointment that ‘it was important for SA to be represented by faces other than the ANC’. True then and not now, alas.”

He also notes that his embassy spent a great deal of time arranging visits to Argentina by provincial and municipal politicians, mostly from the ANC.

Conversely, one could add, the ANC did not complain when, during the 1980s, many US cities, pension funds and universities contradicted US President Ronald
Reagan’s policy of “constructive engagement” with apartheid South Africa by disinvesting their own funds from this country. 

Leon also recalls that when he was DA leader, he visited Israel and met then Palestine leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. He also visited Taiwan twice and met the Dalai Lama in India. He comments: “No ANC outrage then of any sort. So what has changed?”

Perhaps what has changed is that the ANC has grown increasingly insecure as its power erodes and therefore has become more jealous of its prerogatives over foreign policy. 

Msimanga’s visit to Taiwan no doubt rubbed salt in the wounds of its loss of the capital city in last August’s local government elections. 

Though Maimane and Msimanga firmly denied they were conducting separate DA foreign policy, would it have been legitimate if they had been?

Leon certainly thinks so. “SA’s foreign policy is incoherent, haphazardly implemented and its first principles are often honoured only in the breach. 

“It is completely appropriate for the official opposition to pursue foreign policy objectives consonant with its own values, especially as the party now controls four major cities and one province. The ‘treason charge’ is utterly spurious…”

Foreign policy pundits are not quite as unequivocal.

Brazilian foreign policy academic Carlos Milani has noted in an article for the SA Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) that, globally, diplomacy is becoming increasingly decentralised, with sub-national entities – whether lower levels of government or other interests, such as businesses – conducting more of their own foreign relations.

Milani believes that ultimately such diplomacy should be guided by the foreign policy set by the national government. However, he also says national governments should formulate foreign policy in consultation with these other entities and in pursuit of the genuine national interest – not the interest, as is so often the case, of a narrow elite.

So, are SA’s Middle East and China policies really in the national interest? Or are they much more an expression of the ruling ANC’s ideological whims?

China is undoubtedly important to all of us. But is it necessary for the government to be so cringingly slavish that it bars visits from the Dalai Lama to SA, for instance, just in case this might offend Beijing? (Government has still not had the courage to admit it had done so.)

And does the government not undermine its own ambition to be a neutral broker in the Middle East by so clearly manifesting its preference for the Palestinians? Revealingly, just as Maimane was venturing into the Middle East, Zuma chose not to renew the contracts of his two special envoys to that region. Surely this is an implicit admission of failure?

In light of such frustrations and embarrassments, government should actually welcome the injection of fresh ideas and initiatives from elsewhere in the country into foreign policy.

Peter Fabricius was foreign editor of Independent Newspapers for 20 years, writing on African and global issues. He has been writing weekly columns for the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) since 2013.

This article originally appeared in the 16 February edition of finweek. Buy and download the magazine here.